SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Sami R. Harb and his brother Michael may never have met controversial adult video producers/directors Rob Black or Max Hardcore, but a federal grand jury appears determined to make sure that all four men share similar punitive fates.The two Cleveland, OH, adult mail order business owners have found themselves on the ugly end of an accusation of operating what Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman of the District of Utah refer to as “an obscenity distribution business,” as well as associated offences.
An indictment handed down in late June charged the men, doing business as Movies by Mail, with three counts of engaging in a business of selling or transferring obscene DVDs and another three counts of using the mails to deliver obscene DVDs. If found guilty, the brothers could face as many as five years in prison for each count. An arraignment is scheduled for July 12th with U.S. Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells in Salt Lake City.
The indictment, which trumps a June 8th complaint filed in Salt Lake City federal court and unsealed on June 14th, after the Harbs’ Cleveland offices and warehouse were searched, states that three Max Hardcore and Extreme Associates titles were ordered via the Movies By Mail website by FBI Adult Obscenity Squad operatives, and then shipped to a Salt Lake City address. The indictment declares the videos to be obscene, and court documents reveal that they were one of 683 shipments made to the state by Movies By Mail during 2006, 149 of them received by residents of Salt Lake City.
U.S. Attorney Karin Fojtik of the District of Utah and trial attorney Kenneth Whitted of the Justice Department’s Obscenity Prosecution Task Force are scheduled to prosecute the case.
The Department of Justice’s Obscenity Prosecution Task Force was created in order to pursue adult obscenity convictions throughout the nation.
The allegedly obscene titles are Max Hardcore: Pure Max 18, Max Hardcore: Extreme 12, and Extreme Associates: Cocktails 5.
